Laid is good, except when followed by “off” or “up” or “out by a baseball bat”

May 21, 2010

Mikka just got laid off from the wonton soup factory. I think he got hired there when Bill Clinton was president. Well, he don’t have that job anymore.

“He’s depressed out of his gord,” says his girlfriend Samurai Cathy. “He’s not even playing video games. He just puts on Super Street Fighter IV on the Playstation, grabs the controller, sits down, and stares at the title screen. It tells him to “press start” to play but he doesn’t. I pressed start for him once, but then he just stared at the options menu.”

“It’s an awful thing, getting laid off,” says Tina the Lesbian. “I’ve been laid off from jobs I’ve hated, but it sucked ass when I didn’t leave it on my terms.”

“In England they call lay-offs redundancies,” says Bernie the Half-Cyborg Cat. “I guess they don’t call them that in America because you’ll get punched in the face for calling someone redundant, especially if they think it means ‘stupid’ instead of ‘unnecessary.’ The joys of American vocabulary skills. Fuck it, I’ll shoot someone for calling me redundant. I’m a fucking half-cyborg cat, pathetic human. Your whole species is redundant.”

“No one remembers to lay me off,” says Anonymous Doug, whose employment record is on a scroll. “Then again, no one remembers they hired me to begin with.”

“I got laid off from an office job before I started pimping,” says Avonia the Wiccan Pimp. “I didn’t take it too badly because I was secretly glad I wasn’t being fired outright for being grossly incompetent and playing Minesweeper all day at my desk. I needed those few extra weeks of insurance from my severance package to cover some dental work.”

Eventually Mikka will snap out of funk of being laid off and begin the arduous, crushing search for a new job. I’m not sure what his years in the wonton soup factory qualifies him for – or what the shrinking job market can offer him – but if Tag Larkin* can keep finding employment then I like Mikka’s odds.

*Perhaps this is because Tag Larkin is his own reference, and is qualified for all positions. And his resume is his fist.